When I behold what pleasure is Pursuit,
What life, what glorious eagerness it is,
Then mark how full Possession falls from this,
How fairer seems the blossom than the fruit,--
I am perplext, and often stricken mute.
Wondering which attained the higher bliss,
The wing'd insect, or the chrysalis
It thrust aside with unreluctant foot.
- Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Sonnet--Pursuit and Possession

Man should not consider his material possession his own, but as
common to all, so as to share them without hesitation when others
are in need.
- Saint Thomas Aquinas

The only test of possession is use. The talent that is buried is
not owned. The napkin and the hole in the ground are far more
truly the man's property, because they are accomplishing
something for him, slothful and shameful though it be. And what
is a lost soul? Is it not one that God cannot use, or one that
cannot use God? Trustless, prayerless, fruitless, loveless--is
it not so far lost? So may a man have a soul that is lost and be
dead while he lives.
- Maltbie Davenport Babcock

All our possessions are as nothing compared to health, strength,
and a clear conscience.
- Hosea Ballou

We only begin to realize the value of our possessions when we
commence to do good to others with them. No earthly investment
pays so large an interest as charity.
- Joseph Cook

Ah, yet, e'er I descend to th' grave,
May I a small House and a large Garden have.
And a few Friends, and many Books both true,
Both wise, and both delightful too.
And since Love ne'er will from me flee,
A mistress moderately fair,
And good as Guardian angels are,
Only belov'd and loving me.
- Abraham Cowley, The Wish (st. 2)

All the good things of this world are no further good than as
they are of use; and whatever we may heap up to give to others,
we enjoy only as much of as we can use.
- Daniel Defoe

Of a rich man who was mean and niggardly, he said, "That man does
not possess his estate, but his estate possesses him."
- Laertius Diogenes, Lives of Eminent Philosophers
(Bion, III)

Property has its duties as well as its rights.
- Thomas Drummond, Letter to the Tipperary Magistrates

My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, "Good fences make good neighbors."
- Robert Lee Frost, Mending Wall

It may be said of them [the Hollanders], as of the Spaniards,
that the sun never sets upon their Dominions.
- Thomas Gage, New Survey of the West Indies--Epistle Dedicatory,
London, 1648